Everglades canal fishing

I drove south yesterday to one of the canals that runs through the Everglades not far from Alligator Alley.  The canals down there are not unlike the one at the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge in Boynton Beach.  They're freshwater and hold lots of largemouth bass but in my experience have a lot more exotics, such as mayan cichlids and oscars.  Since I've been having pretty good success of late with the fly rod, I thought it might be fun to try out the canal that parallels  Route 27 as it vectors north from Alligator Alley.

I started out throwing a size 4 popper but quickly found that although the fish would attack it, they couldn't swallow it.  So I switched to a size 6 (actually one size smaller than a 4) and started bringing fish to the kayak.  What I discovered, though, is that these fish wanted a much quicker, more aggressive retrieve than I had been giving them.  The shallows of that canal are just full of fish between six and ten inches long.  It may be that there is so much competition for food, that each fish must quickly grab something that moves and looks like food before another fish sees it.  The rapid, splashing retrieve I started to use must have triggered their desire to beat out their competition for a meal.

I worked my way north along the shoreline of the canal, switching from one side to the other as the wind began to pick up a bit.  The main canal has laterals coming off it every quarter mile or so and I fished these as well.  By around noon I had caught a dozen or so fish - a combination of largemouth bass, mayan cichlids, bluegill and another exotic species called an oscar, which is similar in size and fighting ability to a mayan but is darker, slimier and has an "eye" marking on its tail.

Although I was catching fish on the surface popper, I wanted to try out the chartreuse and olive "sqwirm worm" that I've been tying of late.  Once I attached one of those to my leader, the fishing got even better.  I would cast it to the edge of the spatterdock pads, let it sink down a couple feet and then retrieve it with short, quick strips of the fly line.  I began hooking fish on this sqwirm worm every 3-4 casts.  I lost track of how many fish I brought to the boat.  I'd estimate around 40, by the time I quit fishing, around 4 o'clock. None of the bass I caught exceeded 12 inches.  Some anglers would be frustrated by all those "dinks" I was catching.  Myself, I just enjoyed the action, especially when it was produced by a fly I had tied myself.

No video this time.  I brought my camera but realized once I was out on the water that I had neglected to insert the battery before I left home, which I had left plugged into the re-charger.  I tried a few minutes with my iPhone but none of the video was worth preserving.  Here's a mayan I caught with the sqwirm worm: